


Radical Honesty

by AllTheTrueBeauty



Category: The Order (TV 2019)
Genre: Angst, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-20
Updated: 2021-03-01
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:14:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,287
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28186731
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AllTheTrueBeauty/pseuds/AllTheTrueBeauty
Summary: Post-The Commons, Vera deals with the effects of the Egregore and has a conversation with Hamish about a certain magic heist.
Relationships: Hamish Duke/Vera Stone
Comments: 16
Kudos: 43





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Although it wasn't my intent to dive into writing for a new fandom with something so angsty, the muse wants what it wants. Nonetheless I was intrigued by Jack's passing mention that even Vera had a hard time with the Egregore so here we are.

“Do you honestly think I hadn’t considered that?” 

The door to the Grand Magus’ office swung open, and Vera Stone strode into the temple where a handful of disciples had just finished their second round of cleaning for the day. She was trailed by Kepler.

“Look, Vera…”

“That’s Grand Magnus.”

“Sure,” replied Kepler, catching the other woman’s arm in an effort to pull her out of earshot of the disciples. “All I’m saying is that no one, the Council included, would begrudge you a couple of days off. After all, it’s well documented that Egregore has a nasty withdrawal period.”

“It’s fine, Bitsy. I’m fine,” Vera said. “But what’s not fine is that the person responsible for ripping out the hearts of over two dozen people and stealing my inventory has vanished without a trace.”

“Which is exactly why you should go home, get some rest, and let me handle things for a few days.”

“Absolutely not.”

As Kepler placed her hands on her hips, Vera mustered a smile through a throbbing headache she’d never admit, “I appreciate your concern, but I assure you that I have enough magic in place to make this whole thing like a prolonged hangover, nothing more. I am more than capable of doing my job.”

“Fine,” Kepler said, turning to leave as Vera stalked off in the opposite direction toward her office. 

An hour later, Vera found herself sitting at her desk struggling to concentrate on the same page of ancient Sumarian she had been attempting to read since Kepler left. She hadn’t been entirely lying that the physical effects of withdrawal from the Egregore were like three straight days of the after effects of one of the infamous parties hosted by the Order’s Brazilian chapter, but the mental effects were much more than that, and much harder to describe. 

Though the connection to the Sons of Prometheus hive mind had been a deeply invasive and uncomfortable experience for her, the absence of it made something deep within her want to seek out and grasp that same kind of honest, intimate connection. It was counter to everything she had done, mentally and magically, for self-preservation. 

A tentative knock at the door interrupted her thoughts and her feigned reading. 

She glanced up to see Hamish Duke holding a tall glass, and then immediately returned her attention to the book on her desk. “What do you want, Mr. Duke?”

“I wanted to bring you this before I left for the evening,” he said, setting the glass tentatively on her desk. 

She regarded it and him for a moment. “Much as I’ve previously appreciated your talents, I don’t think that’s a very good idea tonight.”

“Soda water, lime and a very specific combination of bitters,” he said nudging the glass toward her. “It’s an old bartenders’ remedy for hangover symptoms.”

She raised a questioning eyebrow.

“Wolf hearing,” he said.

“Right,” she replied, rubbing her temples. 

Turning towards the fireplace, she took a tentative sip of the drink before muttering, “Thank you.”

She stared at the fire for a few minutes, knowing that despite how much he may want to slink away, he wouldn’t leave without her dismissal. 

“Well,” she huffed, turning back to face him. “Don’t just stand there…” She gestured towards the couch. Hamish’s usual smirk was missing as he perched on the edge of the couch, and while his serious expression should have pleased her (this was no time for games after all), it only served as an irritant to her already frayed nerves.

“I’m still mad at you, you know.”

Hamish nodded, “I know.”

“The entire temple, hell the entire university could have been destroyed due to your foolishness.” 

Ignoring the pounding in her head, Vera stood, moving from her desk. “It’s all fun and games, right? Centuries of it. You steal from us, we steal from you, maybe someone else comes in to liven things up and keep us on our toes now and then.”

After emphasizing her last point with half-hearted jazz hands, she sat down on the other side of the couch with resigned sigh, pinching the bridge of her nose, her eyes closed. “I don’t have the time or quite frankly the energy to deal with the unintended consequences of your impeccably timed magic heists.”

Her words stung. Lilith had been one of those consequences. 

“We never intended --” he began.

“Hence my use of unintended consequences,” Vera snapped, a bit more harshly than she had intended. 

“Right,” he sighed, slumping a bit as he angled himself to face on the opposite end of the couch. “And you’re right, in the grand scheme of things, we’re probably just...I don’t know...perpetuating some nihilist cycle that both the Knights and the Order are trapped in - who knows, maybe it was preordained by some medieval vampire wizard who hated us both.”

Hamish laughed bitterly and ran a hand over his face, the sheer weight and ridiculousness of it all finally getting it to him. Lilith was gone, maybe forever. Randall was alternating between moping and trying to get the others to attempt magic way out of their league to get her back. Jack had locked himself in one of the bedrooms at the den dealing the miserable after effects of drinking the Egregore. And Vera was….staring at him, the whisper of a grin on her lips.

“Vampire wizards don’t exist.”

She looked away, staring off at some unknown point on the other side of the room, as the grin fell away.

“What is it?” he asked.

“It’s the damndest thing,” she said, the bitter edge of her voice betraying a sad smile. “This...process of unraveling oneself from the Promethean hive mind is, by and large, an annoyance with the right magic in place.”

Hamish nodded. Jack had theorized that Vera’s magic, combined with having only consumed a small amount of the Egregore, would make her withdrawal process much easier than what he was currently enduring. “But?”

“There’s a level of honesty - radical honesty - inherent in that kind of connection that’s hard to separate oneself from.”

“I’m being honest with you.”

“I know,” she replied, still not looking at him. “Which is why, despite my own better judgement, I’m going to ask you something.”

Hamish straightened up slightly, unsure of where she was heading with this line of questioning. “Okay.”

“Was the timing of the...theft intentional?”

“As insane as it sounds, we really hadn’t thought about how it would affect Rogwan’s regularly scheduled appearance. Honestly, that almost felt like a convenient distraction…” He trailed off, noticing the odd expression on her face and recalling the hours leading up to the heist. “That isn’t what you’re asking.”

“No, it isn’t,” she moved to get up from the couch and quickly added. “And I’ve changed my mind. This isn’t important, and I have work to do. Thank you for the drink.”

Returning to her desk, she downed the rest of the drink wishing she could handle something much stronger right now. Keeping her focus on the book, she heard him stand.

“If you’re going to be here a while, I could make you another,” he said. 

“No,” she said, meeting his eyes for just a moment. “I’d prefer to wait until I’m up for the real thing.” 

“Good night, Vera.”

This time Vera didn’t look up. The prospect of watching him walk away was far too complicated for her liking.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Although I had originally intended this as a one-shot, it ended up going in a different direction than I intended, and so I'm continuing it!

“All I’m saying is that you’re the best person to ask.”

“No, I’m not.”

“You are, and you know it.”

Hamish lowered his book and glared at Randall, “No, I’m not.”

He was about to resume reading when he noticed Randall’s sullen expression and sighed. “Look, I want to get Lilith back too, and I think Vera will help us eventually, but she drank the Egregore just like Jack so this probably isn’t the best time to ask her for anything.”

“And we did just rob her,” Randall shrugged

“That too,” Hamish said, trying to return to his book and not think about what Vera had asked him two days earlier in the reliquary. 

“....Wait….are you upset because Vera’s mad at you?”

“Randall, shut up,” Hamish snapped.

Randall gasped, looking around at no one in particular since they were the only two people in the Den’s living room. “You are!”

Before Hamish could say anything, the front door to the Den opened and a very confused looking Nicole walked into the living room with her backpack. 

“Uhhh guys, why is the Grand Magus on your front porch teaching Jack Morton yoga?”

Hamish and Randall both stared at Nichole for a moment, then looked at each other and headed towards the front door. Hamish made it there first, stopping just short off the door.

“Unfortunately there’s no real relief until the Egregore is completely out of your system, but this should make it easier as the symptoms lessen,” he heard Vera say through the door. 

“Well, anything’s better than nothing I guess,” Jack said from the porch. As Vera began to inquire about whether Jack had heard anything from Alyssa, Randall strode past Hamish and opened the front door.

“Vera, hey. Fancy seeing you here,” Randall said glancing back into the house with a confused shrug at Nicole who merely shook her head. 

“I think we’re done here, Mr. Morton,” Vera said, turning her back towards the house, but not moving to leave. 

“Yeah, uh, thanks Grand Magus,” Jack said heading into the house. “And I’ll let you know if I hear from Alyssa.”

“Please do.”

As Jack walked past him back into the house, Hamish seized the moment and stepped out onto the porch, gently shoving Randall back into the house with some help from Nicole who was already pulling on the younger man’s jacket. 

Hamish moved to stand besides Vera, close but not too close. She was dressed, as almost always, in all black, this time with large dark sunglasses that made her mood even more impossible to read. 

Before he could speak however, Jack and Nicole could be heard from inside the house exclaiming in almost unison, “Breathing exercises are yoga, Randall.”

“Okay, okay, I just thought it was the bendy kind of yoga,” Randall loudly replied. 

As the trio could be heard shuffling deeper into the house, Hamish ran a hand over his face, and looked over to see the slightest hint of grin on Vera’s lips. 

“They’re a handful sometimes,” he said, trying not to let his gaze linger on her lips. 

“Oh I’m well aware,” she replied. 

They were both quiet for a moment. Vera wasn’t precisely sure why she was still there; she had come to check on Jack and that task was accomplished. She ought to be heading across campus to deal with a few university matters before heading back to the Temple to further unravel this whole Cameron Foley-Praxis situation. Instead she enjoyed the quiet of the nearby woods and reminded herself it was only the woods she was enjoying - certainly not her present company, who finally spoke up softly. 

“How are you feeling?”

“Better,” she said softly before she had time to consider a colder, more measured response. She added even more softly, “Thank you for checking on me.”

Hamish hadn’t expected her to acknowledge the text messages he had sent her over the past two days. In fact, after hitting send on the last one approximately 18 hours ago, he was fairly convinced that he was making things worse between them -- and probably even worse still by thinking there was a “them” to make things worse between.

“Yeah, of course...you’re welcome,” he managed to say. 

“I should probably --” she began.

“Have a drink with me?”

Hamish didn’t need to see Vera’s eyes to know her exact expression as her whole posture changed and she was back into Grand Magus mode.

“Do you really think that’s appropriate, Mr. Duke?”

Hamish’s brain was moving at lightspeed trying to process whether Vera was implying what she thought he was implying, which he most definitely was not….not that he’d object to…

Taking a deep breath that he hoped she wouldn’t notice, he said, “Sometimes a drink is just a drink.”

Vera folded her arms, knowing he had more to say.

“And sometimes bad timing is just...really, really unintentionally bad timing.”

“I see.”

“Sometimes you get so swept up in --” he began, before she raised her hand, cutting him off.

“You don’t need to say anything else,” Vera said, placing her hand on his forearm for the briefest moment before pulling her phone out of her pocket and glancing at it. “And I don’t need to be late for my meeting with the Belgrave Historic Preservation Task Force.”

As she moved to leave, Hamish said, “Thank you...for helping Jack.”

Vera simply nodded as she descended the steps on the front porch.


	3. Chapter Three

“So the Grand Magus can just give people werewolf powers?”

It was a perfectly innocent question on Teri’s part, and the young woman barely noticed the way Gabrielle glanced at Selena warily. They, along with Angus and a handful of other disciples, were lounging in the Temple bar. It had been a light day - a few incantations and then more sorting of the items recovered from Cameron Foley’s home. 

Behind the bar, Hamish froze. It was at best a flimsy excuse, unsustainable in the long run, but he had neither the heart nor the courage to question Vera’s declaration mere moments after she called them out for robbing the vault. Thankfully, however, this was a secret that went beyond just Vera and the Knights. 

“Sure, apparently,” Selena shrugged at Teri.

“But how does she pick? Or do we get to...audition or something?” asked a Medicum that Hamish barely recognized. Who were all of these people asking questions?

At this Angus snorted and called to Hamish at the bar, “Yeah, how does that work, acolyte?”

“There’s obviously, like, a whole set of requirements and rituals for that sort of thing that only the Grand Magus gets to know about,” Gabrielle said before Hamish could answer. 

“Miss Dupres is correct.” 

All heads turned as Vera strode in through the door to the altar room. She headed straight for the bar giving Hamish a quick glance. It was all the signal he needed, and, with the subtlest nod, he began making her a drink. 

“Transformation magic is highly dangerous, and so it remains highly secret,” Vera continued. “Until a practitioner has both the skill and discretion to fully understand its usefulness and its consequences.”

“And what use do werewolves have to us?” Angus asked, gaining a glare from Gabrielle.

“They helped us identify the leader of an enemy organization who stole valuable artifacts nearly bringing about the end of the world,” Vera said, pausing to take a long sip of the drink Hamish had set on the bar for her. “Or have you already forgotten the absolute chaos Rogwan caused on campus two weeks ago?”

As the rest of the disciples sheepishly murmured apologies, Vera finished the rest of her drink, letting her fingers brush Hamish’s a moment longer than necessarily as she handed him back the glass. 

“A moment of your time before you leave, Mr. Duke.”

A few minutes later, Vera closed the doors to the reliquary behind them, muttering a quiet silencing spell around the room before sighing as she sat on the edge of her desk.

“This isn’t working.”

Hamish cocked his head slightly, “What isn’t?”

Vera held up her hand, “Do not attempt to derail this conversation by giving me that look.”

“I’m honestly not sure what conversation we’re having right now.”

Vera stared at him for a moment, torn between anger and something quite the opposite at his small shrug. It seemed that, despite her best efforts, the Knights’ presence was becoming more complicated, more entangled with her own tenuous position in the Order with each passing day. And their leader even more-so. 

“We need a new lie,” she said finally. 

Hamish nodded, secretly grateful that she hadn’t meant something else albeit still unsure whether even thinking there was a something else was jumping to a rather large conclusion. Though what has she meant by “that look?”

“I know it’s not ideal, but what if we tell them all the truth?”

Vera rolled her eyes, “Might I remind you that the truth means certain death or, even better, a fate worse than death for all of us.”

“Fair point,” Hamish said. “So we don’t tell them everything…”

“...just the part where I used my authority as Grand Magus to defy the council by letting you all live and then allowed my disciples to spectacularly botch wiping your memories so I was left no choice but to induct you all as acolytes thus creating the perfect opportunity to rob me, but of course no one will assume that last part happened because we just won’t tell them, right?” 

Vera was on her feet now, pacing as she spoke. Deciding it was best to stay out of her way, Hamish leaned on the edge of the desk where she had been sitting as he thought through their options.

“How much does the council know about werewolves?”

Vera stopped in front of him, “What?”

“Specifically the way we become Knights - would they know how that works?”

Vera shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

“But you’ve known since we fought Edward Coventry.”

Vera’s eyes snapped up to meet his. Given the repeated uses of pulvis memoria on the Knights, she had never been sure, but Hamish had all but confirmed it just now - he did remember something of the brief time between Coventry’s defeat and when she had decided that the only way to keep the Knights alive was to make them forget. 

“So you would know that killing us means that the hides would be up for grabs, and that even if you or the Council wanted to, there’s no way you could guarantee that a hide would choose the champion you offered it…”

“...And so I kept you alive because it’s easier to control each of you than your hides,” Vera finished. It wasn’t far from the truth, but it was far less merciful and more strategic, which would appeal to the Council and sound logical to the disciples. “It could work.”

It was only then that she realized how close they were and how easy it would be to stop that infuriating smirk on his lips. 

Hamish felt it too, that almost magnetic energy between them and tentatively placed a hand on Vera’s waist as she murmured, “Don’t look so pleased with yourself.”

“What would you prefer me to do?” 

“I can think of several things.”

As Vera leaned in closer however, so close that her lips almost brushed his, Hamish said her name and gently moved her away from him. He tried not to focus on how simultaneously hurt and angry she looked, yet again because of him as he simply pointed to the door said, “Kepler’s coming.”

Vera briefly closed her eyes, trying to calm conflicting emotions including gratitude for his enhanced werewolf hearing. Marching around the desk, she exhaled, muttering a string of expletives before settling in the chair and beginning to write on a stack of paper placed very deliberately over several books.

Hamish watched her for only a moment before there was an incessant knocking at the reliquary door. 

“Even her knock is annoying,” Vera said, shaking her head before removing the silencing spell and opening the door with a wave of her hand. “Counselor Kepler - impeccable timing as always. Thank you, acolyte that will be all for today.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did you spot the tiny little tease for a new fic-in-progress? Apparently that's being becoming a new bad habit of mine.


End file.
